Adam Christopher - The Age Atomic

“I found him,” she said.

Rad nodded. “The Corsair.”

Jennifer shook her head. “James. His name is James. He was a doctor, a surgeon. When he volunteered, they said they could make use of his skills. I thought that if he had survived — if he hadn’t entered the processing — I thought maybe he would have done something. He would have tried to help.”

Carson stirred. “And help he did. Although perhaps not quite in the way you expected.”

“No,” said Jennifer. “They… they must have started the processing, the mental conditioning, anyway. He… they changed him.”

Rad nodded. “And then after finding Kane and discovering his vision, instead of turning robots back into people, he was continuing the work, turning people into robots.”

“To defend the Empire State,” said Kane.

“To prepare for war,” said Rad.

“He thinks — thought — he was doing the right thing,” said Jennifer. She raised both hands and fanned them out on the tabletop. “Maybe he was.”

The table fell silent. Then Carson hrmmed loudly.

“I see,” he said. “I come back to find the place full of robots, while the city itself crumbles away as entropy increases. It seems I have returned just in time.”

“Where did you go?” asked Rad. “And what happened to you? You’ve only been gone three months.”

“Well,” said Carson, stroking his beard. “By my reckoning, I have been away ten years, at least, although beyond the bounds of the city measuring time is a difficult task.

“But, yes, I abandoned the Empire State. And for that I am deeply sorry. But in the chaos that followed the… well, the you-know-what … while I was trying to pull the city back together, get everything running, removing Prohibition and the restrictions of Wartime and so on and so forth…” Carson rolled his hand in the air. Then he paused and let it drop to the table. “Well, it was Byron. Byron was gone; he had sacrificed himself to save us all. But I wondered, always, at the back of my mind, what had happened to him. Did he survive, perhaps? Did he fly out into the fog and into another world? Did he manage to detach from the Enemy airship and escape? Or did he land? Did he crash? So many possibilities, so many uncertainties. I just had to know. Every time I looked out into the wretched bank of fog I thought of him, and I remembered the two ships, stuck together, vanishing as they left the borders of the Empire State.”

Carson wrung his hands and sighed. “I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? The city was a mess and needed my attention, but always, always I thought of him, of Byron. And then…”

There Carson paused. Jennifer and Kane exchanged a look, and Rad leaned forward a little.

“And then…”

Carson looked at Rad and smiled sadly. “And then there was a signal. It was very faint, picked up by the Empire State Building but largely ignored. So I searched for it myself, and there it was. Faint, but unmistakable. It was a mayday call, automated certainly and the signal alone may not have indicated anything at all but… it was my signal, the mayday from the Nimrod . Which meant he was out there, somewhere. And that was… well, that was that. I had to go.”

Rad shook his head. Byron had survived? Or at least the Nimrod had, and was out there somewhere. Rad couldn’t blame Carson, but still.

“You had to go?” he asked. “You would abandon your post like that?”

Carson sighed again and smiled again, and reached out and patted Rad’s hand on the top of the table.

“Oh, my friend, what would you do? The signal was the final straw, the culmination of everything. Suddenly I had clarity. I had purpose. Byron was alive, and I had to find him.”

Kane whistled. “So you walked out over the ice, just like that?”

“Ah!” Carson laughed. “Reports of my departure were largely exaggerated, as they say. Yes, I walked, and yes, I was on my own, but I was not unprepared. You may recall, the both of you, that I — or at least my counterpart in the Origin — was a polar explorer of some fame. I knew what to do, because I had always known what to do, even though the skills and memories of the past were not mine and not complete. So I was prepared. All the equipment I needed for a solo hike across the ice and into the unknown was at the house. I prepared myself and left.”

Carson looked around the table with a smile, but Rad could see something in his eye. There was a tightness there, and it wasn’t just the miraculous increase in years the man had suffered on his journey.

“And?”

Carson rolled his lips, the action moving his entire beard.

“It was hard, but I succeeded. I came first to the land of the Enemy, a dark, dangerous place. The cold was reaching there too, and they looked to be in even worse shape than our own city. It was a ruin, and I stood on the banks of the… well, the shoreline opposite, and as I watched I saw buildings fall, collapsing like sand into the water. There was other movement too, the people, if you can call them that, all moving at once, back and forth, like ants. I could feel it too. The Enemy was there, and it was fighting with something, or against something — against the dissolution of its world, I suppose. It saw me as well. I knew it, and I… well, I ran. My very presence there seemed to help the thing coalesce, perhaps even hasten the destruction of the city.”

Carson looked across the table, but his eyes were unfocussed. He held one hand out, like he was reaching for something, but he was lost in his memories.

“That was… many years ago. I ran. There was ice and fog, and darkness. Eventually the Enemy turned away, or perhaps I simply got used to it. But one day I felt I was alone, and I could get back to tracing the signal. I had a device, a radio of sorts, but I had run for so long from the darkness that I wasn’t sure where I was, or how far I had gone, or whether I would even be able to find it again. Time passed — how long I have no idea — but then I heard it, the signal. It was far away, so off I went.

“I found other places. A great city they call New Amsterdam was my home for months as I recovered from my flight. But I had to follow the signal, so as soon as my strength was back I continued.

“I saw war and horror. I saw cities burning, cities destroyed, cities empty. And then I found him.”

Rad blinked. “What? You found Byron?”

Carson smiled and seemed to snap out of his reverie. He turned slowly to Rad, and Rad saw a tear roll down his cheek.

“Yes, I did. He’s upstairs, in the ship.”

Carson led them back to the ship, via the main concourse. This time, as they approached along the incomplete platform, Rad had the opportunity to view the ship clearly, although much of it was obscured by the curve of the tunnel.

It was the Nimrod , although it was different. Larger, longer — the lines were harsh, the armor plating pierced and pitted. The Captain’s original airship had been in a poor state of repair when Byron had piloted it away. This machine was the same, but a nightmare version. It felt wrong somehow.

Rad felt a hand on the small of his back. Carson leaned in to him.

“It’s a different ship, yes. Well, it is the Nimrod , but a Nimrod from another world. I had to fight for it,” he said, tapping his eye patch. “But I found him inside.”

Kane walked back from the ship’s door, leaving Jennifer to gaze up at its dented walls.

“How many other worlds are there?”

Carson’s eye narrowed again. Rad decided he didn’t like it when the Captain got that look.

“I thought there was only us and New York,” said Rad. “And the Enemy, of course.”